Flare

flare

A space weather term for a sudden eruption of energy in the solar atmosphere lasting from minutes to hours from which radiation and particles are emitted. Flares are officially measured and classified based on peak X-ray flux from 1-minute-averaged GOES X-ray Sensor (XRS) observations in the 1–8-angstrom passband. Classification generally begins at the "B" level (>0.000 000 1 W m⁻²) and increases by an order of 10 with each subsequent level to "C" flares, "M" flares, and "X" flares. Flare levels of B, C, and M are assigned multiplicative factors (1–9), which are appended to the letter (e.g., M4); flare levels of X are appended with a multiplicative factor from 1 to 20 (anything above 20 is estimated).

Space Weather Prediction Center, 2018: Solar flares (Radio blackouts). Accessed 14 August 2018. Available at https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-blackouts.

Term edited 14 August 2018.

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1. A gaseous envelope gravitationally bound to a celestial body (e.g., a planet, its satellite, or a star).

A unit of length equal to 0.1 nm, or 10^-4 μm.